The present invention relates generally to a surface covering system intended for covering a floor, a roof or another substantially flat, delimited surface which may be exposed to a falling fluid and thus needs drainage. The system comprises plates with a prefabricated decline towards a draining sewer. The invention also relates to methods for preparing such a system.
In order for water or other fluid, such as oil and similar, not to collect on a surface, a decline towards a draining sewer is needed. The surface may for example be a support in the form of a flat roof, the ground surface on an inner yard, the floor in a garage, a kitchen or a wet room, such as a bathroom, a shower room or a laundry room or another substantially flat, delimited surface which may be exposed to water in the form of rain or dripping water and which thus needs drainage.
For example in a wet room the common way to achieve a decline towards the drainage point, in this case a floor drain, is to create the decline using liquid filler. This method has a number of disadvantages, including great time consumption, lifting of many heavy objects by the builder and difficulties in achieving an even decline. There will often be uneven places and inverse declines somewhere on the floor, giving rise to water puddles. It also becomes unnecessarily difficult to put floor clinkers on the filler treated floor, because the clinkers must be cut in order to give even joints.
To simplify the building of surfaces needing drainage, a number of systems are available on the market, consisting of one or more plates with a prefabricated decline, which are put side by side on a flat surface.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,979,927 B2 a method is shown, for example, where a floor decline is prefabricated starting from the placement of the sewer and where a number of square prefabricated elements are joined together by hooking them to one another and a decline is milled starting from the floor drain. The decline milled in each plate is a so-called envelope decline, i.e. it is flat and sloping towards the floor sewer. This means edges are created between every milled plate. These edges complicate the laying of clinkers on the floor and are uncomfortable to stand on.
In EP 12 769 490 A1 another prefabricated wet room floor or roof is shown, where a number of plates shaped like a circle sector together give a circular decline starting from the sewer. The system is founded on a number of segments, identical for each circular turn, being laid out around a central circular segment, placed over the sewer. The floor is laid starting from the sewer and then built up one turn at a time outwards in the room. At the walls the segments are cut to the proper shape. The cutting thus must be made in situ in the wet room. This cutting is time consuming, and there will be a great deal of waste that must be disposed of.